The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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We got a lot of neighbors driving in the scenery lately.  The telephone pole just south of our shack got toppled two months ago, some yahoo texting his girlfriend who failed to notice the slight curvature to an otherwise straight road.  Airbags saved his silly hide.  Another telegraph pole got pole-axed near Hutchison’s Park.  Some pickup with a hot engine came out of the intersection thinking he was on the Bonneville Salt Flats, hit 60 in a few seconds, then lost control and took out the pole, the fence to the park, a concrete piling and still came up laughing.

Guitar Bob’s mailbox was hit too.  The guy had to cross clear over from the other side of the highway to do it.  On a straight road.  His cousin had driven into a couple of ditches the month earlier, supposedly fell asleep, and totaled about three of his grandpa’s rigs.  “Falling asleep” is apparently a euphemism for driving under the influence of narcotics.

Further south an SUV wrapped around a power pole.  Airbags once again saved some lives.  What I wonder as I walk along the shoulder of these roads is how do I get an airbag into my hat?

Pretty obviously today’s drivers aren’t paying too much attention to the road.  They got e-mails to read and texts to send and phone calls to make and a radio to find music that needs dialing.  I see folks with reading material on the steering wheel and folks who do their hair in the mirror behind the visor.

I’m not a real great proponent of most technological advances, but I’m hoping for cars that drive themselves real soon.  Cars that sense the shoulder.  Cars that see approaching objects.  Cars that stay inside the white lines.  Cars that won’t tailgate.  Cars that don’t read their manual on the highway or put on make-up on the way to work.  I want cars that drive without any help from their pre-occupied passengers.  I mean, somebody ought to be at the wheel.  Even if it’s just a circuit board.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/audio-the-reach-of-rome.mp3[/podcast]audio — the reach of rome

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Folks down by me live by a different Code.  Mostly their own.  You live hell and gone from the Reach of Rome, you tend to make up your own rules that meet your local needs.  Laws from places half of us never visited …. well….  Our boys down here are notorious for exaggeration.   What you might call, for want of a better word, Liars. B.S.ers, braggarts, purveyors of Tall Tales.  They still think this the Wild West and they’re the last of the cowboys.   They mostly do what they want and call it freedom.  Laws were made for suckers and sheep.  They’re, by god, not bound by any rules or regulations, they’ll have you know.

I got a little of that in me too, so when I say these outlaws are slightly left of scofflaw, trust me, they’re slightly on the dangerous side.  Sure, some are mild as Two Toke Tom who grows weed the way Grampa Daddle made moonshine.  Just trying to make a living in times out of synch with societal demands.  Prohibition comes and goes.  Today’s criminal is tomorrow’s CEO.  Some of us are just a little ahead of the curve, or so says Two Toke. We all got a small inclination toward the miscreant, I guess.  Well, maybe not the missus.  She toes the straight and narrow.  And tries her best to help me do the same.  Probably why I’m a pillar of the community.  I’d hate to think what might happen if I was left with my own de-vices.

My pals poach, crab, overharvest free range clams, shoot deer out of season with a rifle, not a shotgun, and generally proceed as if game wardens and police officers were mythical creatures.  They eschew niceties like auto insurance, ignore speed limits, drive under the influence and cheat the government on taxes every chance they get.  Which, since mostly they’re unemployed, isn’t all that often.

They build without permits, hunt without licenses, drive without insurance, work ‘under the table’ and generally navigate life as if government was a volunteer program.  All these folks who constantly carp and complain about government, they look at with total bemusement.  Government certainly doesn’t apply to them, why should it bother anybody?  I suppose there will come a time when Rome rolls in, wanting its tribute.  By then we’ll probably all be a docile crowd down here, ready for government health care, meals on wheels and a good nursing home.  Sure hope they don’t have rules at the Mabana Assisted Living Villa.  The boys will want to stay up past Lights Out — even if they’re just asleep on the couch in front of the big screen communal TV.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/audio-version-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket.mp3[/podcast]audio version — going to hell in a handbasket

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We’ve been hearing rumors lately that folks are worried these new pot laws and similar sex marriages are going to be the ruination of society as we know it.  Stanwood and Gomorrah.  Coming to a sex and drug emporium near you!  Probably too late to save em from themselves….

Pastor Paul at the Hallelujah Good News Church of the Rock down at the Odd Fellows Hall they rent every Sunday morning was enjoining the congregation after the voters passed the Initiatives of Iniquity to fight the forces of evil unleashed upon us poor South Enders.  Cast the first stoned, you ask me, but Pastor Paul didn’t.  He read passages from a battered King James to prove his point and God’s, made reference to Babylon and Beelzebub, and practically blistered the varnish off the pulpit.

I know it’s hard to watch if you think sin is spreading around you faster than floodwater in New Jersey, but before we get our earmuffs in a bunch, it’s worth remembering us South Enders haven’t turned to pillars of salt yet and this end of the island hasn’t been consumed by an eternal fire of damnation.  We’ve been similar sexing and smoking herbs other than nettles since I came here back on the 5th day of Creation.  I wouldn’t say we’re Paragons of Virtue  — well, most of my pals aren’t — but if we’re on the Road to Perdition, Hell looks more like Elger Bay Mega Mall than it does Dante’s bad dreams.

Folks are a little too lathered up and Pastor Paul isn’t helping much.  Truth is, he was all FOR that Holy War we been running for a decade and I’m not talking about the Crusade to put a tollgate between Stanwoodopolis and the island to keep the infidels back where they belong on the Mainland.  Pastor Paul would benefit mightily from a bowlful of Two Toke’s Heavenly Blitz, I suspect.  Maybe quit worrying about who loves who.  Love might not be THE answer, but it’s a start….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/audio-south-end-galapagos1.mp3[/podcast]audio — south end galapagos

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Islands attract an unusual crowd of refugees from the Real World.  We got tree huggers and artists, llama ranchers and artists, herb farmers and artists, boatbuilders and artists, retirees who BECOME artists and artists who are discovering themselves.  THEY’LL be the last to find themselves, apparently, because the rest of us can’t turn over a rock without finding one.

I guess islands appeal to the romantic in us.  Sailboats and sunsets, lighthouses and low visibility, mountain vistas and sparkling waters.  The oyster is our world….       Down at the South End we wouldn’t call it romantic exactly.  Sort of matrimonial maybe.  Til death do us part.

People who visit for more than a 5 minute stop at Elger Bay Grocery for directions to the place they were REALLY headed before they got lost, they wonder if the South End ATTRACTS a certain breed of refugee or if living at the end of a long skinny neck island MAKES them strange.  You live somewhere there’s no jobs, no towns, no restaurants, no bars, no taverns, no nothing — sorta like parking the trailer in a Mars Colony —  I guarantee you gotta be, well, different.  It’s sort of a South End Darwinism vs. South End Creationism.

Either you adapt or move away …. Or you were made to be here.  I suspect when the fog clears here on South Galapagos, the only creatures crawling on the rocks on the beach of the next paleolithic era will probably be tough old lizards in special harmony with their rugged environment, painting all the other lizards and opening up galleries to sell their art.  I wish em luck.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/audio-south-end-monks.mp3[/podcast]audio —- south end monks

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